Gov. Dannel P. Malloy threw some choice words at U.S. House Speaker John Boehner on Monday over cutting food-stamp benefits: "shameful" and "reprehensible." The governor was right.

Mr. Boehner started the fight by characterizing Connecticut's attempts to keep poor people on food stamps as "cheating" and "fraud." Connecticut didn't cheat. What it did was both clever and compassionate.

Long ago, Congress decided that families shouldn't have to choose between heating and eating, and so provided a certain level of food stamps for those households getting any fuel aid. Before the 2014 farm bill changed the rules, Connecticut and several other states had made token heating assistance payments of $1 a year to thousands of households to qualify them for that level of federal food stamps (also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program).

But farm bill negotiators, in an attempt to cut federal food-stamp spending, said recipients had to get at least $20 in heating assistance to qualify for a certain level of SNAP benefits. Mr. Malloy became the first governor to raise state heating aid for certain households to $20.01 — enough to let these families maintain their level of SNAP assistance.

Nothing fraudulent about it. Connecticut followed Congress' rules.

The new spending will cost the state $1.4 million, but will keep in place more than $66 million of federal SNAP funding.

Connecticut was soon followed by New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Oregon in taking advantage of what critics have called a "loophole." But this is not a loophole; it's the law. Congress could have eliminated any link between heating assistance and eating assistance in the bill that passed last month, but it kept this lifeline for the thousands of families who depend upon food stamps.

Cheating? Fraud? The more appropriate terms are "caring" and "support."